Mac doesn't accepts any Mac OS CD..but all others CD work fine.

macrumors newbie

Hi! Guys ..!
I have an iMac 233 with Mac OS 9 installed. I have a peculiar problem. My mac doesnt accepts any Mac OS CD ( 8.5 , 9 , X 10.1 and X 10.3 panther) but funny part is its accepting all the others CDs like Audio, Data, Software.. But when I insert any Mac OS CDs its showing a message The disk is not in understandable format. Do you want to initialize .
I even tried booting the System by pressing C key after restarting. Tried by Zapping the PRAM. But non these helped in solving the problem. Can anyone of you help me getting over with this problem
Thanku,
yatheender

macrumors member

Hi! Guys ..!
I have an iMac 233 with Mac OS 9 installed. I have a peculiar problem. My mac doesnt accepts any Mac OS CD ( 8.5 , 9 , X 10.1 and X 10.3 panther) but funny part is its accepting all the others CDs like Audio, Data, Software.. But when I insert any Mac OS CDs its showing a message The disk is not in understandable format. Do you want to initialize .
I even tried booting the System by pressing C key after restarting. Tried by Zapping the PRAM. But non these helped in solving the problem. Can anyone of you help me getting over with this problem
Thanku,
yatheender

Click to expand...

What version of OS 9 are you running? Click on the "About this Mac" (?) in the Apple Menu or run "System Profiler" to find out.
Is this a tray loading CD ROM Drive or slot loading?
Is it the original one??

My guess here is you may need to run a "Firmware Update" to fix the problem, but I'm not that sure about it.

macrumors 68040

It sounds like you have a tray loading iMac, make sure your system is up to date with updates and OS 9.2.2 might help. If all else fails you may need a CD drive, sometimes a drive will read CDs and sometimes it will not work. Its hard to say in this case due to the certain type of disks having problems.

macrumors G4

Hi! Guys ..!
I have an iMac 233 with Mac OS 9 installed. I have a peculiar problem. My mac doesnt accepts any Mac OS CD ( 8.5 , 9 , X 10.1 and X 10.3 panther) but funny part is its accepting all the others CDs like Audio, Data, Software.. But when I insert any Mac OS CDs its showing a message The disk is not in understandable format. Do you want to initialize .
I even tried booting the System by pressing C key after restarting. Tried by Zapping the PRAM. But non these helped in solving the problem. Can anyone of you help me getting over with this problem
Thanku,
yatheender

Click to expand...

My guess is that whoever made those copies didn't do it correctly. Pirated copies of the MacOS and MacOS X CDs work fine if they are copied correctly.

macrumors 603

MisterMe has a point. The source of the problem could be from bad copies, much less, files from the operating system that were not copied when making the disk bootable. If the problem persists in other machines, then... well, I'll let you figure that one out. Also, firmware wouldn't have anything to do with not accepting just the OS disks, as bad firmware would accept almost all acknowledgeable CDs/DVDs (ones without scratches, etc.) or none at all. Additionally, tray loading drives have less issues than optical drives (from my experience), as every CD that has gone into my iBook's tray-loading drive has been read, and not every CD going into my Cube's optical drive stays in the Cube without getting shot back out. So I don't see how a tray-loading drive would be the cause of not reading only OS disks.

MacRumors attracts a broad audience
of both consumers and professionals interested in
the latest technologies and products. We also boast an active community focused on
purchasing decisions and technical aspects of the iPhone, iPod, iPad, and Mac platforms.